Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Y4 Drawings

Vincent asks:  I would like to scratchbuild a static detailed model of the LNER Y4 0-4-0 locomotive, in 1/20th scale. How could I purchase the drawings of the locomotive?

The Y4 is pretty rare in model railway terms - as far as I am aware, you can't even buy a kit for this stumpy little beast. It's certainly been on my list to scratchbuild for many years although the Walschaerts valve gear puts me off quite a bit.

If you aren't familiar with the class, try this link to the LNER encyclopedia. Ugly little devil isn't it? Just my sort of engine!

Anyway, as you can see from the picture, I have managed to find a plan but it was on a second hand stall in slightly tatty condition. Although no company is mentioned as producing it, I suspect it's likely still to be in copyright so I can't just scan the thing and sent it over. At a guess, I'd say the loco was drawn by Roche, so accuracy might also be as much of an issue as it is with some of his other drawings.

A plan is available from D Hewson models and I suspect this would be a better bet. It's also in a large scale so hopefully will be accurate enough to give you a starting point. 1/20th is an unusual scale, more akin to model engineering so I suspect there will be detail research required as well.

Someone is writing up his build of this model here. Apparently the model has been written up in Engineering in Miniature magazine. I'm sure an e-mail to the publishers will get details of which issues it appears in.

If anyone has any further suggestions, I'm sure we'd all appreciate them though. Maybe I'll tackle those waggly bits in 4mm scale!



2 comments:

Tim Illingworth said...

Dropping by a mere 3 years later: the Great Eastern Railway Society has drawings of these, and quotes the original Stratford drawings in the write-up.

dpaws said...

I really appreciate this comment; a quick google, a couple of clicks and I've downloaded what I was after - much obliged.